


keep on truckin'

by bellafarallones



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Awkward Sexual Situations, Car Accidents, Car Sex, Huddling For Warmth, M/M, Snow and Ice, indrid likes being called pretty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-18 21:53:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29615949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellafarallones/pseuds/bellafarallones
Summary: The sun had set behind the pines, and the headlights of the tow truck painted the falling snow yellow as it swirled out of sight. The snow was probably moving faster than the truck was. Suddenly the hulk of a car appeared out of the blizzard, and Duck tapped the brakes until he slowly rolled to a stop, then opened the window and stuck his head out into the night. “Hello?”
Relationships: Indrid Cold/Duck Newton
Comments: 3
Kudos: 26





	keep on truckin'

**Author's Note:**

> based on #5 off [this prompt list:](https://veronicabunchwrites.tumblr.com/post/179652750577) your car slid into a snowbank and i’m the mechanic that comes to tow you
> 
> ThisWasInevitable also did [an Indruck fill to the same prompt,](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27982293/chapters/68537739) which I highly recommend.

The sun had set behind the pines, and the headlights of the tow truck painted the falling snow yellow as it swirled out of sight. The snow was probably moving faster than the truck was. Suddenly the hulk of a car appeared out of the blizzard, and Duck tapped the brakes until he slowly rolled to a stop, then opened the window and stuck his head out into the night. “Hello?”

The car was empty, the windshield glittering with a dusting of snow. Duck got out of the truck, a long leap to the ground, and crunched his way over, sinking into the snow past his ankles.

There was a note stuck underneath one of the windshield wipers, written in a somewhat aristocratic script. A sketchbook was lying abandoned on the front passenger seat, half of the front page torn out, providing the source of the paper.  _ SORRY,  _ the note read, underlined three times.  _ CAN YOU TAKE MY CAR BACK TO KEPLER? I’LL COME COLLECT IT IN THE MORNING. DON’T WORRY ABOUT ME.  _

Duck sighed, and looked around at the dark, snowy woods. It was so cold that to stay the night out here unprepared would be life-threatening. As a park ranger he knew people could make very stupid decisions when underestimating the forces of nature. 

He went back to the cab of the tow truck and got a flashlight out of the glove compartment before shutting and locking the vehicle. Then, as he would to track a wild animal, he swept the flashlight beam over the snowy ground. 

There was a set of narrow footprints, already hazy at the edges from the falling snow, leading away from the car and into the woods. Duck followed them, stepping carefully. There were abandoned wells out in this part of the woods, and sinkholes, all kinds of dangers that could be hidden beneath the snow. 

The footprints ended at the base of a tall pine, trunk bare of branches for at least ten feet. 

“What the…” said Duck, and looked up.

Two glowing red eyes looked back at him. They looked… embarrassed, somehow? “Um,” said the owner of the eyes, which his flashlight beam revealed to be… well, it was something, that was for sure, and not like anything Duck had ever encountered before. There were clawed feet clinging to the branch, and broad black shoulders dusted with snow, and a body in between them, too alien for Duck to make sense of. “Oops?”

Duck shielded his eyes from the glare of the flashlight. “So were you the one driving that car, or did you, like, eat him?”

“Oh, no.” The creature sounded horrified. “I didn’t eat anyone. That’s my car.”

“So why are you hiding in the woods?”

“I didn’t want you to see me and be alarmed.”

“Ah.” Duck thought for a moment. He was no longer as concerned about this creature freezing to death, it looked pretty well insulated, but his boss would not be happy with him if he returned with a car and no customer. “Well, I’m here now. Will you come down and help me with the hookup?”

“Alright,” said the beast in the tree, and dropped soundlessly to the snow, broad wings extending to slow its descent. 

Duck looked up at it. He was significantly more afraid now that it was on the ground with him, now that he could see the  _ scale  _ of it, eight feet tall at least. It was holding a pair of red sunglasses.

“I don’t normally look like this,” it said. “Well, I don’t know about  _ normally - _ I guess I should say I don’t  _ always  _ look like this. But this body has better insulation than my other one.”

Duck put the pieces together: they were a few hours from Point Pleasant, but there were those eyes, and those antennae, which twitched every so often to dislodge the snow that had landed on them. “Are you the mothman?”

“That is not the name I prefer, but yes.”

“What do you prefer?”

“Indrid Cold. Indrid, please. You asked me to help hook up the truck?”

“Uh. Yeah.” Duck tore his gaze away from Indrid’s glowing eyes. “I’m Duck. It’s a nickname.”

Indrid nodded gravely and followed Duck back through the forest towards the road. “I’m gonna back the truck up a bit closer to you,” Duck said, and swung himself back up into the cab, catching sight of the mothman in the rearview mirror as he did so, a dark spectre against the white snow. Then he turned the key in the ignition and threw the truck into reverse. The brake lights lit the snow red.

When Duck got out of the truck again he saw that Indrid’s car had been stuck for so long that the snow had piled up around the back bumper, and he gritted his teeth and started trying to scrape away the snow underneath the back bumper. “I need enough room to get the hook on,” he said by way of explanation.

“Oh,” said Indrid. He plunged his hands into the snow, gripped the underside of the bumper, and lifted it straight up until it cleared the top of the snow. “Is this good?”

Duck stumbled backwards.  _ Fuck,  _ Indrid was strong. “Uh. Yeah. That’s good. Let me just - uh.” He grabbed the hook from the back of the truck and dragged it over, got it up underneath the bumper. Indrid gently lowered the car down again, until the hook was holding its full weight. Then it was a relatively easy thing to haul the car out of the ditch.

When all was said and done, Duck climbed back into the warm cab of the truck. “Hop in.” When he turned around the mothman was gone, replaced by a skinny guy in a baggy pink cashmere sweater and red sunglasses. 

Indrid smiled at his surprise as he buckled himself into the passenger seat. “I told you, I don’t usually look like that.”

“Uh,” said Duck, suddenly tongue-tied. Indrid had a face he never wanted to look away from. And he was probably gay, as well, judging by the dyed-silver hair and half-dozen tiny rings up the shell of his left ear, although maybe the mothman just didn’t care about how humans conventionally styled themselves in rural West Virginia. 

“Thank you for rescuing me,” said Indrid once the truck started moving. Even sitting down it was clear he was the taller of them.

“All in a day’s work,” said Duck. He could feel Indrid’s eyes on him and regretted that he had to keep looking at the road.

“I must say, I’m a little surprised. People normally react to me with more… terror.”

Duck shrugged. “You’re, uh.” He had been afraid, sure, but he’d spent enough time pretending not to be stoned in front of his parents to know how to act natural. And Indrid wasn’t worse than anything he’d seen on a bad trip. “Will you be offended if I say you’re pretty?”

“Not at all,” said Indrid. “I’m comfortable in my masculinity.” 

“Well, you are. And you’re a little too polite to be terrifying.”

“And you have turned out to be as charming as you are handsome.”

“Thanks.” Duck turned his face away, hoping he wasn’t blushing too much. He wanted to be forward, but minute three of a forty-five minute car ride was not the best time for that. He cleared his throat. “So. Uh.” It didn’t feel quite right to embark on a normal course of small-talk with the mothman. 

“You’re from Kepler, right?” Indrid said.

“Yes,” said Duck, relieved that Indrid had taken the initiative.

“What’s it like there?”

“Oh, you know. Small. When I’m not doing this I work for the park.”

“You are a man of many talents, then.” Indrid’s face fell. “You might want to be careful driving, though.”

Irritation flashed through Duck’s chest. “I know how to drive in the snow, I  _ live  _ here.”

“Mhm,” said Indrid, sounding dubious, and that was the moment the truck chose to slide off the road. 

“Shitshitshitshit _ shit-”  _ Duck was hauling on the steering wheel, but a tow truck was heavy, and a tow truck with a car behind it pushing it down the embankment was unstoppable. Finally it came to a stop against a tree with a less-than-ideal  _ crunch. _

Indrid sighed. “Sorry.”

“Not your fault,” Duck grumbled, and dug his phone out of his pocket to call for rescue.

\--

Indrid supposed there were worse ways he could have spent the evening. Alone in the woods was one example. Injured from the human shooting at him was another. So being curled up with a stranger in the backseat of his car wasn’t all that bad. Even with Duck’s body pressed up against his, and a musty-smelling blanket scavenged from the tow truck on top of both of them, Indrid was shivering. His human body was terrible at thermoregulating itself, and under normal circumstances he would not at all mind having a bear to keep him warm, but now he felt a little bad about being such a heat sink. 

He knew they wouldn’t die either way, but they were stuck here until sunrise at least, and he felt obliged to at least offer. “I don’t want to make things weird, but my other body would be a lot warmer for both of us than this one.”

“I think you missed the boat on not making things weird when I had to coax you out of a tree,” said Duck. “I, uh, I was kinda thinking the same thing, though, and if you wouldn’t mind…”

“Alright, then.” Indrid disentangled his arms fully from Duck’s torso and sat up. The back seat was already cramped and about to become a lot moreso. When he removed his glasses his wings thumped against the back of the front seat, not having enough room to fully extend, and the glow of his eyes illuminated Duck’s face. Indrid made an unhappy  _ mrr  _ noise, a little claustrophobic, a little uneasy at being this near a strange human, but rubbed his arms. He was already feeling warmer.

“How should we do this?” said Duck. 

There was a lot of awkward shifting. Indrid’s wings had to go somewhere, but if they went in the gutter in front of the seats he felt like he was about to roll off, and Duck’s shoulder kept brushing regions of wing that made Indrid have to bite back a moan, which didn’t help matters. 

They ended up with Indrid on the bottom and Duck lying on top, against the back of the seat with Indrid’s arm around him. “You’re so warm,” said Duck, voice muffled as he spoke into Indrid’s chest. “And you smell like pineapples.”

Indrid squirmed. He hadn’t thought humans could smell his pheromones. Never mind that he could taste Duck’s arousal on the air as well, the tenor of which was unexpected but certainly not unwelcome. “Yeah, yeah, I can smell that you’re horny, too.”

For a moment Duck was silent. “I wasn’t going to bring it up, but - look, are you saying that because you’d like to do something about it?”

Indrid froze. Duck probably hadn’t known what the pineapple smell meant,  _ he  _ was the one who’d taken an innocent comment and made it weird. Although... “I wouldn’t  _ not  _ be interested, if you’re sure you’re amenable -”

Duck’s fingers dug more insistently into the fluff on Indrid’s chest. “Pretty damn sure.”

“You have strange taste in partners, Duck Newton,” Indrid murmured. “Luckily for me.”

“Ain’t nothing strange about it.” Duck looked up, blanket around his shoulders, and laced their fingers together. “Tall drink of water like you.”

“Yeah?” said Indrid breathlessly. “You’re into tall guys?”

“Especially when they’re unfairly good-looking in two different bodies and strong enough to lift a fuckin’ car.” 

Indrid looped his arms around Duck’s neck. “I liked how you looked at me when I did that. Made me feel, mm, big and strong.”

“I’d gladly do a lot more than look at you.”

“Please.” Indrid’s body was covered in chitinous plates, with thick fur between them and in a ruff at his neck. Duck tangled his fingers in the fluff and lunged down to kiss Indrid’s cheeks - he didn’t really have lips like this, just a proboscis curled tight beneath glittering compound eyes. His hands were human, though, hands now skating appreciatively across Duck’s shoulders. “My wings are - very sensitive,” Indrid said when Duck’s hands edged that way.

Duck pulled back a little to look at them, black with mahogany eyespots like an ink-blot test. “In a good way?”

“Yes,” said Indrid. “If you’re gentle. But I - I want -” and then his hips bucked forward pathetically as Duck’s fingertips brushed his wing. “Hnngh, Duck, I want to make you feel good too, where should I touch you?”

“Oh, my chest, and - I could grind on you, if you’d be alright with that.”

“Yes.” Indrid was already positioning his thigh obligingly so Duck could get his on either side and press himself against the unyielding chiton. Duck, meanwhile, stroked Indrid’s wings like he was touching something silken and delicate, and Indrid was beyond the point of caring exactly how inhuman the noises he made were, distracted by his own pleasure and finding the sensitive points of Duck’s nipples through far too many layers of fabric. “Can I take your shirt off?”

“Too cold for that,” said Duck, thrusting his hips more and more shamelessly. “Are we- are we getting to a place where it’d be appropriate for me to ask what your genitals are like?”

“I have a penis,” said Indrid. “It’s internal until necessary.”

“Proportionally sized for an eight-foot-tall man?”

“What, are you hopeful?”

Duck grinned down at him. “Maybe. Maybe I’m deciding if I want to invite you home with me for round two after all this mess is over.”

Indrid whimpered a little. He almost couldn’t imagine it, being good enough to be  _ invited home,  _ especially not by someone who knew what he really was. 

Duck must have misinterpreted his pause, though, because he hurried to backtrack. “I mean, you don’t have to, I don’t want to pressure you to get your dick out or anything if you don’t feel comfortable -”

“Nono, I want to,” said Indrid, and with Duck’s eyes on him he allowed the plates on his abdomen to separate enough for his dick to slip out and into his hand. 

“Wow,” said Duck. “Can I touch?” Indrid nodded, and then Duck was stroking him off, so different from his own hands, Duck’s palms were calloused and perfect, and Duck murmured  _ pretty  _ and must have felt Indrid’s dick jump in his hand because he looked up. “Yeah? You like when I call you pretty?”

Indrid nodded desperately, because he  _ did,  _ he was so used to being regarded as demonic and terrifying that being pretty was delightful, especially to be called it by someone like Duck, someone handsome and gentlemanly-charming. 

“Good,” said Duck, “because you are, you’ve got a pretty dick - and you were selling yourself short about how big this thing is, by the way - and you’ve got pretty feathers and pretty eyes…”

Indrid focused on trying not to thrust his hips up too hard, but if Duck kept talking like that and touching him like that he was going to finish embarrassingly quickly. “Duck  _ please -” _

With his free hand Duck stroked down Indrid’s face, not recoiling at all from his strange eyes or insectoid flesh. “So fucking glad I found you, pretty thing like you shouldn’t be freezing out in the woods, want you in my nice warm bed.”

Indrid came with a cry, over Duck’s fist and his own stomach, and he had to close his eyes for a second, breathing hard. He felt  _ cared for,  _ that was the thing, that Duck had driven to his rescue and tracked him through the snow and said  _ no, come down, you’re not too scary  _ and allowed him to help with the tow and shared his own warmth when Indrid’s body needed it and now was touching him like he was something precious. 

When Indrid managed to get back to reality Duck was still there, watching his cock retreat back into his body. 

“Is it weird to say you have really cool anatomy?” Duck said when he noticed Indrid looking at him. 

“No weirder than anything else that’s happened tonight. There should be a box of tissues in the console, to clean up with.”

Duck hummed and went rummaging. “You’re prepared, huh?” 

“I was not expecting anything like this.”

Duck wiped off his other hand and then the hard plate of Indrid’s exoskeleton, which was luckily smooth and easy-to-clean. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a good place to put these besides just the floor of your car?”

Indrid groped for the plastic bag he’d been using to contain his candy wrappers. “I’d been on the road long enough to have an established trash bag.”

“Where were you going?”

“Kepler, actually.” Indrid rested his hands on Duck’s hips. “But I believe we were in the middle of something?”

“Oh, I wasn’t in danger of forgetting just how worked up you’ve gotten me.” Duck kissed Indrid’s cheek, almost chaste in comparison to the intent with which he rolled his hips. After a minute or so, though, Indrid’s antennae twitched as he caught an edge of frustration in Duck’s scent, and it made him whimper; he wanted Duck to be satisfied, wanted to take care of his mate - but he shut down that line of thought immediately. He couldn’t start thinking of a human that way,  _ especially  _ one he’d just met, no matter how much he wanted to.

Eventually Duck groaned. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to get off from just grinding on you.”

“I’m better at oral in my other body,” Indrid said. “Or I assume so, anyway. This form’s equipment seems so unsuitable I’ve never actually tried. So I could, um, switch to looking human again to get you off and then switch back?”

Duck’s mouth opened, like he was surprised at the offer. “That sounds like a lot of work and I don’t want to get that undressed.”

“Alright. Just - whatever you want, Duck.” Indrid tried not to sound too desperate, but he wasn’t sure he managed it.

Duck unbuttoned his pants. “Doing hand stuff always makes me feel like a teenager again.”

“Moreso than doing it in the back of a car?”

“That too.” Duck dragged Indrid’s hand down by the wrist and guided it between his legs until Indrid felt wetness against his fingers. “ _ Fuck.” _

“Do you want my fingers inside of you?” 

“Yeah, yeah, that’s -  _ hngh -  _ fuck, Indrid, harder, I ain’t gonna break -” Duck was hot and wet and perfect inside, and Indrid curled his fingers up to make him squeak.

Indrid could feel Duck twisting in his arms, clinging to him, and he rubbed his face against the unfamiliar texture of his hair, wishing so badly he could kiss him. 

“ _ Fuck  _ Indrid how are you so good at this,” said Duck, and that was not a question Indrid had been expecting to be asked, even less one he was prepared to answer, but Duck didn’t press him on it because he was coming, thighs squeezing tight around Indrid’s hand. Then he flopped down boneless on Indrid’s chest, and Indrid couldn’t imagine how he, Indrid, had ever not wanted to be close to him. 

“You good?” said Duck. The air inside the car was significantly warmer than it’d been, at least, even if it did smell like sex.

“Yeah. You?”

“Just came so hard I feel like I’m about to conk out, so yeah.” 

“You may as well sleep, you said yourself we have until morning.”

“Yeah.” Duck rubbed his cheek against Indrid’s fluff. “G’night, Indrid.”

Indrid wrapped his arms around Duck’s back and held him close, keeping him warm. “Goodnight.”

\--

Duck woke up to a tapping at the window and the bemused face of Leo Tarkesian staring down at him. He looked frantically around - Indrid was already awake and had his glasses back on, and to Leo it must look like Duck had been crushing the skinnier man beneath him. 

Duck got out of the car onto the snow, and helped Indrid out after him. “We were just, uh, keeping warm,” Duck said by way of explanation. Indrid, underneath his opaque glasses, only smiled.

“Of course.” Leo looked dubious, but he didn’t say anything about it. “The tow company in Huntington says they won’t be able to make it over here ‘til one, but I figured I may as well come rescue you all.”

“Thanks, Leo,” said Duck.

“Gonna introduce me to your friend here?”

“Uh, this is Indrid? Indrid, this is my neighbor Leo.”

“It’s nice to meet you, although it could have been under better circumstances. I’ve certainly learned my lesson about going out in the snow.” Again that smile, almost as dazzling as the sun on the snow. “Duck took very good care of me, though.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Hit me up on Tumblr @bellafarallones


End file.
